Kitty Deschanel | Food, Wine, and Travel Adventures Across the USA

It's 3am and I'm wide awake. Hooray for idiopathic insomnia ! Methinks I will schedule this post for a more reasonable hour. What's the best time of day to post on a blog? Also, methinks that methinks is a pretty cool word. Merriam-Webster was with me on methinks, but isn't going for smooshing 'me also thinks' into one kick a$$ word. I suppose it does look like something to do with a meal. Mealsothinks. This meal stinks? Does a banana count as a meal if you eat it at breakfast time? Is it still breakfast if you eat it at 3am? Methinks you might be reading the ramblings of a crazy person. I'd better go back to bed. Have a fun weekend, bloggy friends!

  ***UPDATE:  I no longer recommend Groupon for gift-giving, as their return policy is TERRIBLE! LivingSocial, however, has an excellent return policy. A Groupon gift certificate, which would allow your gift recipient to select whatever they want from Groupon, would probably still be fine. There are plenty of online gift guides for Christmas present ideas. Magazines during this time of year supposedly have a gift idea for everyone on your list, including the crazy ones . Is it just me, or are most of the holiday gifts suggested completely terrible? A $45 votive candle holder? Oh, thank you so much. I'll put it in the box with the rest of my candle holders. Now, where is it? Ah yes, the back of the closet in the spare bedroom, underneath these boxes. Lemme just blow the dust off it real quick. And, yes, I did put a lot of thought into the sarcastic votive candle holder example above. To my recollection, no one has gifted one of these to me. If you did give m...

There's no time for chit chat today. I'm actually working on my novel! It's the same one I've been "working on" for the last decade or so - I never work on this thing. Soon I'll be 30 though, and I just can't bear the thought of having it nowhere near finished on my next birthday (notice I didn't say "the thought of not having it finished". I'm realistic.) My brain wants to focus on every single thing except writing, like playing Candy Crush, watching the cars in front of my house run the stop sign (grrr!), and refilling my cup of tea for a third time. Maybe some Ritalin would help. How do you get Ritalin? Have a great weekend and a fun Halloween! 6/10/18 Update: So, my novel is surely finished by now, right? It has been a million years, after all. LOLOLOLOL.

Have you noticed every blog has posted a Starbuck's Pumpkin Spice Latte copycat recipe lately? This one is different. I promise! It's so good that I've been making a regular one with my breakfast each day and another decaf pumpkin latte every evening. At work, I shared the recipe with two patients last week! When those pumpkin latte recipes started popping up, I couldn't wait to try them. They all had the same problem though - too much time and effort. Ummm, I want a pumpkin spice latte recipe that I can actually pull off before work in the morning, when my brain is still mostly asleep. Have you seen what some of these other recipe creators expect you to do? Boil down 3 cups of sugar until you have a simple (yeah right) syrup, shave fresh cinnamon from the stick you got from the farmer's market this morning, and have a unicorn spit into the mixture. Who has time for all that? Easy Pumpkin Spice Latte Recipe (for LAZY people!)    Serves 2 Ingredients 1...

I'm typing this while stuck on hold with Travelocity. Why don't they offer an online chat option? They are an online travel agency, after all! This call has been going on for close to 40 minutes. That's worth saving $25, right? Have a great weekend, my bloggy friends! *Update* My call finally ended and I actually saved $50, not just $25, on our upcoming Alaskan cruise. Totally worth it! (Though, I'm still not sure why it had to take sooooo long!)

My hair has been looking kinda sad lately. It hasn't been trimmed in months, excluding the time I bravely/foolishly took the scissors to it myself, and the color, which I wasn't crazy about to begin with, had faded to a fuzzy beige. On Tuesday night, I dyed my hair with the darkest brown dye I could find. It's a little too dark. Everyone wants to know why I dyed my hair a harsh black! Tomorrow, I'll be adding some caramel highlights. Tune in next week for photos (beautiful photos, I'm sure - no hair disasters, hopefully!) And now, let's link up:

I have not one, but TWO, weddings to attend in the upcoming weeks (one of which involves guests staying at our home), so I'm going to be busy, busy, BUSY this weekend. Of course, I'll still make time to visit all your fabulous links. That's a weekly highlight!

Sexy Nerd and I will be celebrating with grilled steak (cooked for us by one of our favorite Albuquerque restaurants, Scalo) followed by an evening on our patio, guarding our house against any stray fireworks set off by riffraff neighbors. Whenever we hear an explosion, we'll shake our imaginary canes and grumble that we hope they blew off a finger. Isn't it nice when two old souls find each other? Think how bad we'll be once we hit our mid-thirties! Have a great 4th of July weekend, everyone.

(Yes, of course you are!) I'm 100% ready for the weekend, with nothing planned except reading magazines, relaxing, and resting my beaten-up body. Oh, didn't I tell you? I got my butt kicked last night. By myself. You'd think by age 30 I'd have gotten the whole "walking up steps" thing figured out, but I apparently haven't. I'd you've ever tripped while running upstairs at full speed, resulting in both bare legs smacking into the wooden step edge, and both arms twisting wrong in a failed attempt to stop the fall, you surely feel my pain. But hey, at least I didn't break both legs, right? Have a better weekend than me, bloggy friends. 6/10/18 Update: It has been TEN YEARS since that fall on the stairs and you still cannot touch my legs where they hit or else they will hurt. Crazy, right?

Sexy Nerd and I are spending this weekend designing our dream home . The plan is to break ground within the next couple of months! How about you?

Have a happy Father's Day weekend, everyone.

I don't know about you, but I have had more than enough of summer. It's soo hot! The other day, my Volt told me it was 105 degrees outside. One hundred and freaking five!! It's definitely time for me and my Sexy Nerd to get away on another vacation. I'm thinking Antarctica...

My Wi-Fi is finally working reliably...I think... And, yes, we are here for the "epic victory". The crowds are rowdy! Have a great weekend, everyone!

  ***UPDATE: Amerisleep has started a new referral program. If you order your mattress through this link , you'll save an additional $50 on top of other discounts and specials !!!*** Mother's Day is almost here, which has somehow morphed into a holiday where you have to give your mom a present...and your sister(s) and your sister(s)-in-law and your friends and your employees. Yes, being a "dog mom" counts. Basically, all women expect a gift on Mother's Day. Need some gift ideas? I've taken my list of gifts from Christmas and have edited it for moms. There's also a kick-@ss (in honor of the holiday, there's no actual swearing here, as my mom would surely not approve) Amerisleep Mattress Giveaway with TWO WINNERS (kick-@ss odds of winning something) at the bottom of this post, so if you're broke and can't buy anything for your mom, you can at least try to win her something nice. Everyone seems to have a recommendation for the *perfect* gift...

It's the weekend! It's the weekend! Sexy Nerd and I have had quite the week. We found a great new place for happy hour that's within walking distance of our house. A beer each, 2 tacos each, 3 sopapillas, (which Google keeps trying to "correct" to Sarsaparillas) and unlimited chips and salsa was only $10. Not bad! We also looked into selling our future home site to buy a lot on the golf course. Hmmm...decisions, decisions. (Truthfully, the decision has already been made to keep our current lot. It seems much more dramatic the other way though!) There's a great new feature for the Not "Baaad" Sundays blog hop. By hovering your mouse over your favorite pins, you can easily post them to Pinterest . Neat, right? Have a great weekend, everyone!

I can't sleep! True, it is only 9:36 pm, but I want to go to sleep now! I called my dentist today to set up an appointment for a filling and they said - lucky me - they can get me in first thing in the morning. Lol, at work I tell paranoid parents every day that getting a filling is absolutely no big deal, but I don't want one! I was kinda hoping they would get me in sometime next year. Better to get it taken care of, I guess. The cavity is on a wisdom tooth, which I have decided to keep instead of having pulled. If I end up having a filling AND later having it extracted, I'm going to be a bit annoyed. I hope my dentist doesn't do a half-assed job on the filling. He thinks I should just have my wisdom teeth extracted. I started reading a new book called Something Borrowed, which is about a girl who sleeps with her pregnant best friend's fiance. It had good reviews, but so far it is just boring, (not boring enough to put me to sleep though! Rats!) At least the Sho...

Better late than never, right? P.S. I'm feeling much better. I think my bummed-out mood was mostly caused by a weird health thing that happened last week (not that turning 30 wasn't kind of a bummer too though, but it's nothing a little cake and birthday freebies can't fix!)

Did SNL ever make an Easter version of that Christmas song? You know, like "I don't care what your mama says, Easter is full of chee-er". Or something like that. I'm rambling because it snowed last night and is still snowing this morning. Even though it's my day off. Apparently, the weather doesn't care that I purchased the Bossypants audio book and have been planning for 2 weeks to listen to it while walking today. I suppose technically there's no reason to cancel my walk and stay in my pajamas all day just because of a little snow... It's probably icy though. Better not chance it. On to the Easter goodness! "Peep! Peep!" What You'll Need (makes 10 super-cute Peeps nests) 7oz melted chocolate chips (approximately 1 1/4 cups) 5oz Fiber One bran cereal (or similar)(Chinese Noodles should work just fine as well) 10 Peeps chicks 20-30 Jelly Beans Not a photo of worms in a bowl, I promise! Combine the melted chocola...